I don’t know if you’re supposed to mix blogs or projects, but I think a little transparency is always good.

The stuff I’ve written (and others) here on grootship.com is good, and should read and studied, but in an attempt at full disclosure and to provide reasoning why I haven’t posted here in a while, I offer this video.

You have people who have subscribed to your blog, but you’ve totally neglected them.

Solution:

Don’t.

Ok, I confess. This is me.

And this is embarrassing, but I’m going to just come out and say it. Going for total transparency here.

There are a lot of options and features and cool tricks and stuff you can do with a WordPress blog. And I thought I had perused enough through the features that I knew where to go if I wanted to do something. Well, either I didn’t look hard enough, or wasn’t curious enough to find out, but I’m sorry to say that I just found my list of subscribers.

‘Sorry’ meaning I’m sorry it took so long, not sorry I found it. Rather the opposite – ‘elated’ and ‘exuberant’ that I found you.

So thank you very much, subscribers. I’m sure it was on a whim, but you took action nonetheless, which is more than most people.

Buy this book, End Malaria, and your $20 will go to buy some mosquito nets, which I guess they don’t have enough of in Africa. Seems simple enough.

The thing is, they know for a fact that mosquito nets will protect children and others from the mosquitoes that carry malaria. It’s a simply preventable disease that no one should have to endure. Especially when a lot of us could skip a lunch for $20 and help those less fortunate.

And if you do it today, you’ll be a part of End Malaria Day, where the book will reach #1 on Amazon and save 4 million lives.

You can’t seem to make any progress on your projects. You’re always getting distracted and rationalizing other activities that are not helping you move toward your goal.

Solution:

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. ” (Lao-tzu said.)

And that entire journey consists of a whole bunch of steps, one at a time.

So making progress is nothing more than putting one foot in front of another.

Sure, that sounds easy enough when you’re talking about a long walk. But what about completing a large, complicated project?

The principle is the same.

The problem is that, in our mind, all the actions required to complete our project don’t show up as equal tasks that you can just string together, one at a time, in a linear fashion, like a bunch of steps. It’s more likely to have a bunch of moving parts, that function simultaneously, involving other people, creating new ideas, making tough decisions, and balancing time with the other important aspects of your life.

True?

Well, did you catch that one phrase?

“…in our mind…”

The fact is, we really can only do one thing at a time.

And in our mind, some tasks have been defined as hairy or difficult or complicated or huge. But they really only consist of a bunch of small actions. Sure, a lot of things may be happening, but you yourself are only doing one thing at a time.

So if we can redefine our project into smaller, simple, or easy tasks, and just do those,

one at a time,

consistently,

every day,

it will be just like putting one foot in front of the other,

and making progress.

Before you know it,

our epic journey is complete.

It turns out that I’m not the only one with this thought. People smarter than me have done some research. And when Dan Pink (author of Drive) highly recommends a book, I listen. Check out The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer.

Your meetings are ineffective and waste a lot of time and resources. Decisions take way too long to get made.

Solution:

Implement the Modern Meeting Standard.

If you haven’t heard about it yet, the latest best selling book on Amazon is Al Pittampalli’s, Read This Before Our Next Meeting. And it is taking the corporate meeting culture by storm.

Al unabashedly declares that meetings are a cancer that is eating our productivity, progress, and overall morale throughout corporate America, and he is here to cure us.

His book is a manifesto on meetings where he declares what’s obviously wrong, and then presents an alternative called The Modern Meeting Standard.

This new standard of meetings is based on several principles that we know in our heart are true. And yet, we still fall victim to decades of learned behavior. It’ll be hard to change, so we need to help each other.

The Domino Project has put together a handful of goodies to help us in this journey to a better way. Here they are in summary:

You’re not learning new things, expanding your horizon, getting out of your comfort zone, or having exciting experiences.

Solution:

Raise your curiosity.

Most people think curiosity is just a trait you’re born with and you either have it or you don’t. But you know that can’t be entirely true because sometimes you are more curious than at other times, and even people who may not seem like the curious type have at least been curious about something at some time in their life.

The Curious Mind

So if curiosity is fleeting and sporadic, and it can help us learn new things, then we need to figure out how to capture it, control it, and use it to drive our actions. We need to develop the curious mind.

Experiment

Try this experiment.

Think of a time when you were really curious about something. What did it feel like?

You really wanted to know that one thing, didn’t you?

Ok, now try to feel that feeling again. You’re feeling it now by just remembering the situation.

Now, keep that feeling, and think of something else that you want to do or learn, but were afraid of, or didn’t think you could pull it off, or thought it was too far fetched or crazy. Then realize that you don’t really know exactly what might happen if you tried that. Isn’t there some aspect that you are curious to know what really might happen?

There, now forget about your fears or doubts, and let your curiosity drive you to action. It can be stronger than the forces holding you back.